My Father My Lord

A "heartbreakingly tender" (New York Times) new entry into Israel's
ongoing filmmaking renaissance, My Father My Lord is "an anguished, mordant
sigh of a fable" (New York Sun) set in the ultra-orthodox Israeli community
in which writer-director Volach was raised. This "astonishing debut feature"
(Variety) is a "beautifully made film" (Newsday) portraying childhood at its
most transcendent and fundamentalism at its most intimately corrosive.

"We do everything in the Torah without asking why," Rabbi Eidelman (Assi
Dayan), a pious, respected elder in a cloistered Hasidic enclave tells his
wonderstruck only son Menahem (Ilan Grif). But at an age where life prompts
questions increasingly outside the confines of doctrine, Menahem unwittingly
runs afoul of his father's inflexibility. Mindful of her marriage vows but
accepting of her son's boyish curiosity, Rabbi Eidelman's wife Esther
(Sharon Hacohen Bar) is caught in the middle. A holiday at the seashore
meant to reconnect the family brings the ideological rift between pre-teen
boy and middle-aged man to a biblically and dramatically tragic climax.

"Lifting equally from the secular religiosity of Krzysztof Kieslowski's
The Decalogue and the aesthetics of Jewish ritual itself" (Village Voice),
and "profoundly compassionate toward its characters" (NY Times), My Father
My Lord "shines with a radiance and grave grace." (Entertainment Weekly)

Reviews

"Has the glowing simplicity of a biblical parable...profoundly compassionate...a movie of tiny gestures and earthshaking implications." - Stephen Holden, The New York Times

Awards

Interested in bringing My Father My Lord to your school or library?
If you'd like to have an in-class viewing, on-campus screening, or purchase the DVD for
your library's collection, please contact Estelle Grosso at EDU@kinolorber.com or call
(212) 629-6880 with your request.